Put Power Tools in Kids' Hands

K-12 STEAM education

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Children in LA County of all economic backgrounds need experience in project-based learning and hands-on making in order to participate in the Creative Economy. STEAM, woodworking, and maker education are severely lacking in public schools, with fewer than 1 in 20 LAUSD schools having an in-house maker education program. Research shows that hands-on STEAM experiences like maker education support longer attention spans, skills development, knowledge acquisition, social-emotional learning, and increased engagement with STEAM learning and careers. While many private schools have makerspaces filled with tools, materials, and trained staff, most children in LA lack hands-on opportunities to make robust art-first STEAM projects. Rediscover’s sustainable maker education programs support youth’s development into environmentally responsible makers and creative problem solvers who can find a place in Los Angeles's booming Creative Economy.

The Mid City area of Los Angeles is particularly underserved by youth resources in visual art, maker, or STEAM education. To counteract the discrepancies in access to STEAM education in Los Angeles, in 2023 we opened Rediscover Center Mid City in Angelus Vista, our second public makerspace location. Rediscover Center Mid City provides Open Studio hours, after school classes, woodworking workshops, and camps, completely free of charge for local residents, centered on sustainable art-first STEAM curriculum. Responding to community needs, in 2024-2025 we aim to expand Open Studio hours from 2 days a week to 5 days a week. Open Studio hours are drop-in, no reservation required, in efforts of increasing accessibility for community members. Facilitation is provided in English and Spanish. At Open Studio, youth make independent projects using our crafting, sewing, cardboard construction, woodworking, and digital fabrication toolsets, receiving one-on-one skills and project management mini-lessons as need arises. Using plentiful donated recycled and upcycled materials means youth's projects can grow to epic scale while participants increase their engagement with a sustainable circular material culture. With a grant from LA2050, Rediscover Center Mid City can expand the reach of this new and vital program to serve an additional 1-2,000 youth, with a focus on walk-in families and students recruited from 20 Title I schools within 1.5 miles of Rediscover Center Mid City.

As a result of making art, building, and inventing alongside peers and neighbors, youth in Mid City will take pride in their neighborhood as a place where art is made and celebrated. Through our work, the cultural fabric of LA County will be strengthened today, and members of tomorrow’s workforce and community will become more sustainable and creative. As we test out an economically viable model for neighborhood youth makerspaces, we prepare to expand these opportunities to all youth in LA with a growing network of Rediscover Centers. All youth and families deserve equitable access to public spaces that invite creativity and self expression. When we promote STEAM education through a sustainable lens, we provide community wellness opportunities for both people and the environment. Rediscover is raising a generation of Angelenos who are conscious about sustainability and material culture. Rediscover is a community center for youth passionate about making LA more creatively sustainable.

We have run Open Studio at Rediscover Center Venice since 2005, welcoming families on a reservation/fee basis. Since opening Rediscover Center Mid City in December 2023, our priority has been to keep programming affordable or free-of-charge for young people in the neighborhood and surrounding communities. Based on initial funding, we started with a modest schedule of Fridays and Saturdays, the most popular days in our community surveys. We are in the early stages of expanding the program to five days a week, creating out-of-school hours for youth to come in on weekends and after school. We measure success through attendance numbers at Open Studio sessions and through conversations with young people, family members, and listening to the community's voices, then responding to their needs. We study participating youth’s development of maker skills, project management skills, and environmental awareness over time and document evolving creative expression from project to project.